Thursday, September 13, 2007

THE MIGHTY MOUSE SHOW episode 2 MIGHTY'S BENEFIT PLAN

If was a programming exec, I would make shows formatted something like this:

MUSICAL BUMPER - TWIST AGAINST THE WILL OF THE MAN

COMMERCIAL FOR TOYS OF THE STARS TO GET NAKED WITH

CARTOON _ MIGHTY'S BENEFIT PLAN

This was my favorite of all the Bakshi Mighty Mouse episodes. It came out the closest to what I envisioned. There are many episodes that make me cringe. BTW, I have restored some scenes in this cartoon that were cut out way back when. They aren't in this copy, but you can see the cartoon uncut wherever I do a retrospective.

OHOORIDS CEREAL COMMERCIAL

PREVIEW OF FEATURE MUSICAL - GIRLS OF ROCK 'N' ROLLHere's some really great animation of Alvin and the Chipettes. (Steve, who did it? Glen Keane did some didn't he? Dan Haskett? Rebecca Reese?) And how weird are the human character designs? It's like 2 different movies!

FINAL BUMPER - RELIGION IS PRACTICED BY EVEN PRIMITIVE CULTURES - GREAT SONG!

http://classiccartoons.blogspot.com/2007/07/mightys-benefit-plan.html

If you wanna know back stories, let me know and I'll do another post with lots of details.

54 comments:

>>Here's some really great animation of Alvin and the Chipettes. (Steve, who did it? Glen Keane did some didn't he? Dan Haskett? Rebecca Reese?<<

HA,HA,HA,HA,HA !!!!!

Seriously though, I couldn't even finish that crappy trailer.As for the sixties Alvin and the Chipmunks, that is definetly what excutives really need to shoot for at least.Those cartoons weren't that funny but they were highly appealing and fun.

I love the follow-through and the rhythm and acting in the Chipmunk Adventure animation (very energetic and fluid but what did you expect they got a lot of the best technical animators from Disney who were out of work at the time) but the designs overally are just bleaaahhhh. I never really was a fan of the later chipmunks but the 60's one are at least fun. It's amazing that they lasted this long though. I wonder when a "Nutty Squirrels" revival is in order (hahaha).

Man, "The Chipmunks Adventure" has some really strong cartoon animation!

I love how their limbs stretch when they dance. There's lots of bouncy accents, especially during Brittany's dance, before the creepy guy appears next to the statue of Medusa. It's layered too, there's beautiful follow through when she sticks her tongue out at Alvin.

Nice layouts when they're "Heading to the city lights" Greece looked a lot like Hollywood that night.

the chipmunks movie is freaking incredible and holds up better today than when i was a kid. and i remember it for sure, it was an entertaining quality film with good animation. that resonates.

i don't know how people can come on here and say that it's bad or bland!!!

that stuff is amazing and a lot cartoonier in motion than anything i've seen in a feature...ever? that quick shot where the guys and girls are leaping toward each other is posed beautifully and timed really well! and all their poses and dance moves are exaggerated and stretched so quickly it gives a lot of force to their actions. it's just overall a lot of fun to watch.

maybe i'm raving but i've watched it three times already.

the people are weird and that always bugged me, but it totally reinforced how strange it is that dave hangs out with chipmunks. plus the bad guys are ugly and weird and not just plain, so at least they're visually interesting. made the movie scarier for me when i was little. now they're a lot harder to look at, i'll admit.

i know you're looking for support not crit but i always wanted to like the mighty mouses but it just was too liquidy feeling or something to me. lots of zip stretch sort of blurs and very few inbetweens. i'm guessing that was a way of stretching keys and getting more drawings in on the budget? though later cartoons of yours definitely seem to have more weight and solid proportions, like the ranger smiths for instance. i feel like if you were to tackle something like mighty mouse now, it'd come out a million times different. again not trying to knock it, just curious as to certain stylistic choices.

>>i always wanted to like the mighty mouses but it just was too liquidy feeling or something to me. lots of zip stretch sort of blurs and very few inbetweens. i'm guessing that was a way of stretching keys and getting more drawings in on the budget?<<

Hi Smo

you're right, but it was low budget overseaes animation.,

The big breakthroughs were in the drawings and stories. We posed everything out in LA, and there had never been a TV cartoon with so many customized poses and such strong acting before.

We wrote the stories to take advantage of that.

Of course I would have loved to have the animators from the Chipmunk movie (and the budget) but we did what we could with our limited resources...while completely changing the Saturday Morning production system at the same time!

Haha, when I think the eighties, I think of the Chipmunks Movie. Roller rinks, ponytails, legwarmers, it's all there.

The animation on the chipmunks was fun and energetic and fluid, but the humans are painful to look at!

Also, a little too liberal an application of "MAGIC SPARKLES." How those Disney animators love their magic sparkles. Even the Disney Barbie dolls I had as a kid (hey, I'm sorry) were practically coated in gold glitter.

I have actually been watching that Chipmunk Adventure clip every now and then over the last few weeks. Found it looking for the '60s Chipmunks actually. I was surprised to find that the feature animation is just REALLY FUN to watch (even though Dave looks like a zombie).

And it's been so long since I saw Witch Doctor! Always loved that. Thanks for posting it.

On a sidenote, what did you think about the Muppet Show, John? They had a nice mix of musical numbers, skits, and the like. Their songs and guests could be boring or plain bad sometimes though.

I always liked the way you structured Ren & Stimpy between them adressing the audience, space episodes introductions, commercials, cartoons, music. Definitely post the back stories btw.

On the models used in the movie, they're kind of nice. Check out that 2nd link, #018. The face is pretty generic, but the proportions and bottom-heavy form looks good. Never seen the feature. I'd imagine these models are strong enough to support a musical, as long as the motion is good which is. If it was a slower paced dramatic feature, it would be tougher to watch those designs for an extended ammount of time.

Glen Keane worked on Chipmunks? That's like Olivier appearing in "Biodome". Hmmm, the deal with Mephistofeles is becoming clearer now.

Whatever the merits of the animation, I always felt Chipmunks was the weakest talking animal concept ever. Basing a whole franchise on the sped-up voice gimmick... well, I gotta give him credit for getting a lot of mileage out of not much gas.

I remember that even as a kid I hated Alvin and the chipmunks. I guess now I know why… The design is very bland and those tremendous annoying voices…. And for god sake they are all the time squeaking songs…

I'm glad to see you like the animation in that movie. I found that same clip recently on youtube and I loved it too. One of the Chipettes actually looks like Tex Avery's Red in some of those clips.I have to order this movie via internet...or hope they will release it again in Spain when that crappy-looking CGI thing arrives to cinemas.

There was some crazy stuff in the mighty mouse one - I like when mighty mouse is flapping through the air - his hands have this crazy wipe to them. Interestingly, the girls animation at the beginning looks really fluid - even though it looks like it might've been on 3s.

Yeah the animation is pretty good in the Disney one - its just not funny.Yeah there's some really good posing,I actually kind the stuff going on when the girl first goes on top of the pillar. Some of it looks like its on ones.

Hey John---I watched that 80s Chipmunks cartoon all the time when I was kid. Brought back memories, andthe dance animation is incredibly well done---elastic and alive. Some of the girl's movements remind me of the way you animate your girls (thinking of your Bjork video in particular). Thanks for sharing!

outsourcing of animation labor is my biggest pet peeve. it totally devalues us as animators, like the animation aspect of animation is expendable! not to mention it can totally kill good preproduction.

when i was little and reading about windsor mccay and termite terrace all all those back in the day stories; i always thought that's how the animation industry still was. either some crazy guy who could just devote ridiculous amounts of time to making a film and live off making newspaper comics, or a tight knit studio where everyone gives each other the hotfoot.

outsourcing really almost killed my dream of being an animator, and i've basically devoted my life in part to helping to save animation and bringing it back to the states somehow.

i really appreciate everything you've done to bring back the studio feel and this blog for making people realize animation isn't mindless machine labor.

keep it up!

also i looked up the imdb on the chipmunks movie and all those people you mentioned worked on it, david feiss too.

>>outsourcing of animation labor is my biggest pet peeve. it totally devalues us as animators, like the animation aspect of animation is expendable! not to mention it can totally kill good preproduction.<<

I agree

I doubt it can be totally eliminated, but I have some ideas of how to bring back some animation to the country (continent)

Whoa- that chipmunks animation was good!!! Better than I remember! The only thing I remember about that movie was how depressed it made me at like 6-7 years old. Oh ya- but I do remember the girl hot air balloon having bows on the sides. Weird.

Awesome John! Me and my buddies kinda have a similar plan of attack for how we're gonna do our internet cartoons. Animating characters promoting products makes commercials entertaining so that audiences will sit through them

Hey, John. It's me again. Listen, I dunno if you reached me back again. I know how much this seems like spam, but honestly, here me out.

I'm trying to get my cartoon/comic noticed and I wanted a critique from an actual writer. You fit the criteria.

I know it seems like spam, but Im serious. The comic is called Chancre Scolex Middle School and you can see it on my blog. Just click on my name, and I SWEAR it's there.

Please, John. If I don't get a report on it, I'll never improve.

Oh, and by the way...no offense to ANYONE, but as a 13 yr. old in the world, DAMN, the animation of the original Chipmunks was weak. The new modern animation as seen in that disturbing musical number was the one I grew up with, so obviously the original one creeps the HELL out of me.

And plus, the idea of a crappy CGI movie based on it is REALLY gonna be bad. I SWEAR.

Anyways, the disturbing musical number that drives me to homicidal tendencies just by hearing the lyrics themselves do have everything Paul B. listed, but as he said, it was bland and tasteless. But while I find the drawings and character models appealing, it's just that something's missing. Maybe it's just that I haven't seen the movie itself, but DAMN, I canNOT watch it. Seriously. I cannot STAND a stupid musical number. I couldn't sit through it.

As realistic as it seemed...well you get the point.

Anyways, John, I love your blog and enjoy reading it for ideas of character designs and just examining what you seem to understand about animation. Though there are some things I DON'T agree with, I still find the blog has lots of pointers. Feel free to step by MY second blog,

The Chipmunks are really bizarre. To me their 80's incarnations made them a little creepy. Where did the Chipettes come from? The movie has this really beautiful hypnotic animation but they're like these cute six-year old kids with weird animal noses singing these cheesy sexually charged 80's songs. It's funny but it's messed up.

Besides the animation itself, what's really fun is slowing down the Chipmunks' voices.

I won't give away who did the [original] Chipmunk voices, but his enunciations alone were why the Chipmunks talked the way they did. High-pitched voices aside, the Chipmunks didn't deliver their lines with regular folk rhythm - they had their own dialect.

Today, that dialect is lost when all you gotta do is a simple digital pitch shift on recorded vocal. But speeding up tape was truly an art form in itself. That's yet another key element that went missing in later incarnations of those 3 little critters.

Heya John K, I gotsa question. I'm a sophomore animation student currently creating my own cartoon for my demo reel. I enjoy watching all kinds of cartoons to observe their style - what do you think (visually) of modern Cartoon Network cartoons such as 'The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy', 'Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends,' 'Class of 3000', 'Camp Lazlo' and 'Edd, Ed, n' Eddy'? Do you ever watch any of these? I'm thinking backgrounds right now. That backgrounds post a few days ago really helped a lot - thanks!

Ross Bagdasarian did the original Chipmunks' voices. His son Ross Jr. and daughter-in-law Janice Karman did the voices for the 1980s version onward, including the CG movie.

It still sounds like they're doing the unusual enunciation, which makes sense beause when you speed up a voice like that, some of the sounds become indistinct and the voice less intelligible. (Listen to when Alvin says "Come on, Theodore!" in the Chipmunk Adventure clip. No one I know talks like that!)

Brittany from the Chipettes is a more dynamic and fun performer than that other Britney.

Ah, thanks for the cartoon. Out of curosity, what was it that inspired the roadkill narrator character? It seems a bit out of place, was he a standard character who told those kinds of backstory flashbacks or was he a one-off?

Also, I don't suppose you have any information on what went down when CBS took the show off because of that lady complaining about the "cocaine snorting" thing? I thought it sounded kind of iffy back then.

First off, Please Please Please do more posts about the Mighty Mouse show; what it was like working with Bakshi, the stuff networks wanted cut out, etc. I would be glad to read such posts. And this is doubly so for any more posts on Joe Barbera and the other greats stories you hinted at(what he thought of writers, the test of the spumco system) you alluded to in that post.

Joe Barbera Tributehttp://tinyurl.com/38qavg

Speaking of the Bakshi, this brings me to my second point. I dusted off my old copy of the chipmunk adventure and was surprised to find out it was great. But even more shocking was that the great Louise Zingarelli--an Bakshi Alumni-- did the character designs. That explains completely why the humans are so weird. Louise has a really interesting style of caricature that give her human drawings a unique look, particularly from real humans, but especially for cartoons [Actually, I’m a bit supposed you didn’t like the humans in some fashion. They are certainly a prime example of mixing solid deign with specific details. Far more interesting that Dic infected Disney designs you--and I-- revile]. You can also see her work in Cool World and especially Hey Good Lookin’, which may be the only animated film with humanoid characters having specific acting:

One more detail; not only did Louise design the characters, and animated them, but she was also in charge of picking the voice talent, which may be why the voices fit pretty well for all the characters. Imagine, let a creative type conceived, execute, and pick the voices for characters in an animated film. Why, that’s almost . . artistic and rational in some way. What executive was asleep at the wheel?

i was really surprised to see the Chipmunk's Adventure clip among the older clips. at first i thought, "WHAT?! john must have made a terrible mistake. he almost certainly has to hate this!" bland, unfunny, uncartoony designs!

but after watching it, you're right! there are definite flashes of brilliance in the animation. very funny movements! it IS like watching two different movies!

I agree with you on the Chipmunk Adventure sequence having really compelling and interesting animation, but I really dislike the color presentation. Everything has a strange pastel wash to it. It is rather unattractive.

I really think that Ross Jr. missed the boat on his presentation of Dave Seville. There is something intangibly funny about the way that Ross Sr. presents himself as the consummate straight man on the razor's edge of exploding with violent rage. Even the way Ross Sr. would pause when making a statement (which I assume is more of a speaking error than anything) is rather funny, I think.

I am not a big fan of the re-imagining of Dave Seville as an 80's sitcom dad.

it's interesting that you like the 80's chipmunks when you said that you liked the 60's chipmunks better. but i love the chipmunks adventure movie. i guess it partly has to do with nostalgia but your right, there is some good animation (and the songs were catchy!) it beats the crappy cgi movies in all categories.